Printers are useful for producing printed images of a wide range of types. Printers print on receivers (or “imaging substrates”), such as pieces or sheets of paper or other planar media, glass, fabric, metal, or other objects. Printers typically operate using subtractive color: a substantially reflective receiver is overcoated image-wise with separations of cyan (C), magenta (M), yellow (Y), black (K), light black (Lk), and other colorants, one at a time.
In various printers, receiver sheets are transported by a transport web or belt through a plurality of printing modules. Each printing module deposits a single separation on the receiver sheet. In such printers, a plurality of receiver sheets can be present on the transport web simultaneously. In one example, a five-station printer can transport five sheets on the web simultaneously, with one sheet being printed in each module at any given time. More or fewer sheets can be accommodated on the web simultaneously depending on the spacing between printing modules and the length of each receiver sheet. Moreover, a single receiver sheet can be engaged in two or more modules simultaneously if the receiver length is greater than the spacing between modules.